


remembrance

by berettas



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, First Dates, Grief/Mourning, Pregnancy, anyway this is so cheesy, but i love them :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26437021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berettas/pseuds/berettas
Summary: Kurenai remembers their first date more vividly than she’d prefer.
Relationships: Sarutobi Asuma/Yuuhi Kurenai
Kudos: 16





	remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> heyyy how y'all doin... um i kinda been on a lil 🤪✌️ kurenai & asuma angst trip 🤪 lately and i wanted to write a short sad piece of shit so i did exactly that. 
> 
> this work does have mentions of miscarriage, though kurenai does not experience it, it is mentioned a few times. b safe luv u all hope u like

Kurenai remembers their first date more vividly than she’d prefer.

She remembers the years of pining over one another, the weeks of Asuma trying and failing to subtly ask her on a date. She remembers how their hands would drift together while sitting in waiting chairs outside of the mission room. She remembers how Asuma would buy her roses,  _ always  _ roses, because they “remind me of your eyes”, and even though the smell of them made her sneeze, the ones he gave her were scattered around her apartment, shoved in whatever cup or vase would fit them.

She remembers their first date.

Asuma had wanted to ask her out without asking her out, at least not specifically on a date. He’d ask her if she wanted to get coffee after training, or if she wanted to take a week-long mission with him, but it was never outright  _ asked _ . Then, one day, after over a month of this behavior, Asuma finally must’ve gotten his act together.

They’d been with their teams, she remembers, a conjoined training session to work on chakra control exercises. After the kids had scattered to go get lunch, Asuma had turned to her with a cigarette in his mouth and a blush forming on his tanned cheeks.

“Hey, Kurenai, what do you say about going out for ramen?” Kurenai had thought he would stop there, but to her surprise, he wasn’t finished. “As like… y’know.. a date?”

Though her heart was fluttering in her chest and her own face was growing hot, she crossed her arms and eyed the man with a small downturn of her lips. “Well, I’d think about it if you didn’t have that dirty stick in your mouth,” she jabbed. She liked Asuma,  _ really  _ liked Asuma, but the smell of cigarettes on him made her sick. They weren’t good for him and he knew it, and it was frustrating.

He’d immediately let the cigarette fall from his mouth and stomped it into an ashy dud under his boot. “Now will you go on a date with me?” He had a hopeful raise to his eyebrows, and Kurenai felt a smile form on her face in adoration. 

“Sure.”

The date itself had been nice, it felt much more relaxed than all of the other meals they’d shared together. There was no longer the block of a presumed-unrequited crush shoved between them. They laughed, and shared stories about their kids, and sipped off of each other’s drinks. It felt like they’d done this a million times before. It felt  _ natural. _

More dates slipped in, dinners after tiresome missions, coffees before meeting with their teams. They held hands as they cheered on their students (minus Shikamaru) at their chunin exams, and kissed for the first time while celebrating their success. She started spending more nights at Asuma’s place than her own. They were both  _ happy. _

They never really _ told _ Kakashi or Gai, they just knew. It was obvious through Kakashi’s relentless teasing and Gai’s constant exclamations of “youthful love”. Kurenai was endlessly grateful for them; the friends she had begun to think of as brothers.

Then Kurenai missed her period. And another week passed, and another, and she didn’t know whether she should be soaring through the air with excitement or scared shitless. The past month she had been telling herself that it  _ couldn’t  _ be, there was no way, but Tsunade told her differently. She was pulled off of the mission roster, _ “until further notice”,  _ and didn’t know what to do. She had to tell Asuma, obviously. But what if he didn’t want a baby? What if he wasn’t willing to stay with her after she told him? And what if he  _ did  _ want a baby, but it didn’t make it? Would it be better to tell him now, or in a few weeks when she could be more confident that the baby would pull through? Concerns swarmed through her head like gnats as she wandered to Asuma’s apartment. 

He was home, and immediately let Kurenai inside, a soft smile on his face. She had to tell him.

“Asuma…” she started during a lull in their conversation, drawing the man’s attention to her. “Asuma, I’m…” Those worries floated up again, clogging her senses and making her freeze. A warm hand on her cheek, turning her face towards Asuma’s, melted the ice surrounding her. 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Asuma questioned softly, brushing his fingers through her hair. She leaned into the touch.

“I’m pregnant, Asuma.”

She’d never forget the toothy grin that spread across his face.

They weren’t sure if they should tell their friends. It was still early in the pregnancy, after all, and she wouldn’t want to get anyone else’s hopes up in case something went wrong. On the other hand, she was  _ buzzing  _ with the secret that there was a literal human being growing inside of her, and she wanted to tell at least like,  _ Kakashi.  _

In retrospect, she wishes that she would have caved in and told someone. She wishes that she would’ve gotten to celebrate with her friends  _ and  _ with Asuma. 

She remembers the day it happened almost as vividly as that first date. The whole day had felt off. Asuma was out on a mission with his team, so Kurenai had gone out with a girl friend to try and relax a little, but something was wrong. She summed it up to sickness due to her pregnancy, and tried to act like nothing was going on.

Then they returned.

Then they returned, but Asuma didn’t come barging into her apartment singing some jaunty song and picking her up to spin her around in circles. They returned, but instead of being greeted by a prickly beard brushing her face as her lover peppered her face with soft kisses, she was faced with Shikamaru standing at her doorstep.

And she knew what that meant.

Everyone knew what that meant.

She fell to her knees, and the world seemed to lose its color. 

The memory wasn’t so vivid after that.

She remembers staying the night at Gai’s apartment for a few days, him and Kakashi spread out on futons while she tried to muffle her cries into Gai’s couch cushions in the middle of the night. She remembers the funeral, just barely, and she remembers Kakashi telling her that they killed the men that killed Asuma as they stood over his grave, the soil still too-fresh under their boots.

Her team stayed with her a lot after that. Kiba would stop by in the morning to make sure she was up, and would ask her if she wanted to go on a walk with him and Akamaru. She never declined. Hinata would drop in every Friday just to knit and chat with her, catch her up on the ninja gossip she was missing out on. Shino bought  _ way  _ too much baby stuff, from a very nice crib to numerous rattles and books and toys, and were he not a probably-loaded clan heir, she would have insisted he returned all of it. It was sweet of them. They were good kids, and she was glad that they would be in her child’s life.

Now, she stared at her child’s resting face as she fidgeted in her sleep, eyelids twitching minutely. She didn’t look much like her nor Asuma yet, still too pale and chubby and indistinguishable.  _ Mirai.  _ It was the name that slipped right off of her tongue the second that the nurses informed her that her child was a girl. She remembered Asuma smiling to himself in the darkness of their bedroom one night.  _ If it’s a girl, we totally have to name her Mirai, okay? It’s a name I heard while on a mission in Kiri after the war. It’s pretty, isn’t it? _

At first, Kurenai had objected to the name to no end. She’d wanted their choice for a girl to be of one of her favorite book characters. It seemed silly, now. A book character? Why had they ever fought about that? It was ridiculous. Asuma was right, Mirai was much prettier. 

Kurenai remembers a lot about Asuma. A  _ lot.  _ And it makes her miss him. Whenever she hears a laugh in the same baritone, or awful karaoke at a bar, even when she catches a whiff of cigarettes -- cigarettes she’d always hated -- she remembers him. And though she’s constantly reminded, with time it stops being a painful tug, and turns into a fond remembrance. She’s glad she has only good memories of him. It helps her heal, in a way. She doesn’t know if she’ll go back to being a ninja. Maybe she will, when Mirai starts taking up missions.

It doesn’t matter if she goes back. Konoha is peaceful again. Her little girl will get to grow up in a village that isn’t plagued by war and death. Kurenai is thankful for that, at least. It was more than she ever had. She doesn’t need to be a ninja anymore. She has her friends, and her daughter, and she doesn’t have much to worry about other than getting her kid to school on time and remembering to drop off some yarn at Hinata’s home. 

Things have changed, people have been lost, but she’s still  _ happy.  _ She tells Asuma this one day, standing at his grave while Mirai’s at school. The turf is settled now, the only flowers on the slab are from her and Mirai. 

“A lot of time has passed since then, hm? I wish we would have gotten together sooner instead of wasting all of those years pining,” she sighs. “I regret a lot of things. And it’s  _ so _ cliche, Asuma, I  _ know,  _ but one thing I don’t regret is falling in love with you. Even if it took us a while to get around to it.”

She wiped a stray tear from her cheek as the wind picked up. It’d rain soon, she’d better get home.

“I’ll miss you, okay? I do miss you, I mean. But I won’t  _ stop  _ missing you. Not ever.” She set a single rose in front of the grave and turned to head home.

_ I love you, Asuma. Sleep well.  _

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i hate this so much it took me a whole ass page to get around to the mf ending 🙄  
> talk to me on [tumblr](https://bootlickerkakashi.tumblr.com) if u want to 😳


End file.
